BAGHDAD (AP) — Sometime soon, the U.S. military will suffer the 4,000th death of the war in Iraq.

When the 1,000th American died in September 2004, the insurgency was just gaining steam. The 2,000th death came as Iraq held its first elections in decades, in October 2005. The U.S. announced its 3,000th loss on the last day of 2006, at the end of a year rocked by sectarian violence.

The 4,000th death will come with the war further out of the public eye, and replaced by other topics on the front burner of the U.S. presidential campaigns.

*blah blah blah*

Retired Army Gen. Barry McCaffrey said during a recent speech at the Council of Foreign Relations in New York that the situation for U.S. soldiers in Iraq is ”infinitely better” now that during 2006, when Americans were losing the equivalent of a battalion — about 600 to 1,000 soldiers — a month to deaths and injuries.

But McCaffrey said the U.S. military is being drained of its energy and morale because of the slow pace of training that will allow more Iraqi soldiers to take over the fight. American soldiers, he said, are ”becoming increasingly unsure about the position they’ve been placed in.”

The Bush administration has credited an increase of 30,000 troops for a decrease in violence, which it says has improved the lives of ordinary Iraqis.

In the poll, however, more than half the Iraqis, 53 percent, felt that the rapid buildup of U.S. troops in Anbar province and in Baghdad has made overall security worse, not better. Even those negative findings, however, were a sharp improvement since a similar poll last August. Then, 70 percent said the American buildup had made matters worse in the areas it had emphasized. Only 18 percent said it had improved their conditions then, compared with 36 percent now.

The nationwide poll found the Iraqis’ negative assessment of the rapid troop buildup came from all categories of respondents. Still, the poll responses reflected the overall improved assessment of conditions now as opposed to August, the month after the buildup was fully in place.

Regarding security, political dialogue, ability of the Iraqi government and economic development, 42 percent to 53 percent of the respondents found the situation worse. Those findings were down by 17 points to 27 points from the same questions eight months ago.

”Direct ratings of the surge likely reflect the United States’ general unpopularity,” the poll’s writers said. When ”viewed through the filter of general antipathy toward the United States,” they wrote, the drop in negative sentiment is notable.

And here in the real world, the Surge seems to be responsible for, or at least linked to a wide variety of positive developments in Iraq. Sectarian deaths are down over 50% (more than 80% in Baghdad) compared to late 2006. Attacks on civilians are down over 50%. Attacks on Coalition and Iraqi forces are down 90%. Things are so much better in Fallujah, the former epicenter of Sunni insurgency, that there are only 250 US marines there, instead of the 3,000 garrisoning the city at the beginning of last summer.

If you don’t believe these numbers — and there is often good reason for skepticism about statistics from Iraq, whether they are the fantasy death tolls dreamed by Britain’s Lancet or the statistics collected by US and Iraqi authorities — then the data collected by anti-war groups like icasualty.org also seem to indicate a precipitous drop.

(Lots more at the link)

You can see this most depressingly in a widely cited article by Michael Kinsley which asserts that the Surge is a not a success because it has not ended quickly enough. Kinsley concedes, in a sarcastic tone that “the surge is a terrific success. Choose your metric: attacks on American soldiers, car bombs, civilian deaths, potholes. They’re all down, down, down. Lattes sold by street vendors are up. Performances of Shakespeare by local repertory companies have tripled.”

The irony is amusing in a way, though its implications reveal something ugly. For him the metrics are a joke. Either because he can’t imagine or empathize with the suffering inflicted by a marketplace bomb or an IED, or because the lives of Iraqis and of American troops simply don’t count compared to a rhetorical point scored against a hated President.

And the dinosnore enemedia wonders why people aren’t reading their papers? Could it be because they are trying to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat?

“Although the Post-Dispatch is performing relatively well, especially compared with other metropolitan newspapers, we believe it is prudent to dial back our expenses modestly,” Kevin Mowbray, publisher of the Post-Dispatch, said in a statement.

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I can’t tell you much this sickens me to read…mostly because I know it’s true.

Lt. Col. Jeffrey Chessani is a 19 year veteran of the US Marine Corps, with tours of duty in Panama, the Persian Gulf and three tours of Iraq. He is also a man whose well documented, and heroic, career is on hold right now because of the accusations of one man: John Murtha, American Congressman, who went on national television and accused the Marines of killing innocent civilians in cold blood. Lt. Col. Chessani swore an oath on joining the military to defend America against all “enemies, foreign and domestic”. As has been seen repeatedly throughout the current war, it is the domestic enemies that people like the Lt. Col. most have to defend themselves against.

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Thank you to all the folks at Resolve To Win. You guys have put the biggest smile on my face the past few days. You guys truly rock! The lame stream media hasn’t given you the coverage it should have, but your cause is just.

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Don’t you just feel like saying “well, duh!” As if none of knew this before — but hey, I’m really glad that someone did a study that proved us right.

Are insurgents affected by information on US casualty sensitivity? Using data on attacks and variation in access to international news across Iraqi provinces, we identify an “emboldenment” effect by comparing the rate of insurgent attacks in areas with higher and lower access to information about U.S news after public statements critical of the war. We find in periods after a spike in war-critical statements, insurgent attacks increases by 5-10 percent. The results suggest that insurgent groups respond rationally to expected probability of US withdrawal. As such counterinsurgency should consider deterrence and incapacitation rather than simply search and destroy missions.

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Little Green Footballs tells us just how whacked the moonbats are getting. They are planning to “storm a military recruiting office and imprison the recruiters in a ‘movable cage'” this weekend in Pittsburgh. Isn’t there some kind of a law against that? Wonder if the ACLU will get involved? And where is this in the news?

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"The American media....is free to differentiate between the torture of Abu Ghraib Prison and the beheading of innocent hostages. The fact that they shamelessly tilt their coverage toward the horrors of Abu Ghraib while underplaying the beheadings, accompanied by internet gloating, sends a message something akin to: Well, if you're going to force an Islamic prisoner to put women's panties on his head you may as well go ahead and cut it off. It really amounts to just about the same thing!" ~ Barry Farber